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Found 96 results for the keyword ‘Concrete’

  • Weather Restrictions: Elastomeric Liquid Waterproofing Coatings

    Connect to your favourite weather forecaster and look for the following conditions:   Category: Concrete     Product: Elastomeric Liquid Waterproofing Coatings Temperature Limitations: Use above +10 C (+50 F)  and below +32 C (+90 F) Rain Limitations: No rain for 24 hours Wind Limitations:  ...
  • Modern Lime Wash for the Heritage look.

    Lime was the primary ingredient in most stains in the old days -- it was called a 'lime wash'. It can be used to stain all porous materials including masonry, concrete, and stucco without causing any of the moisture problems that modern finishes may cause. Given the need to use traditional mater...
  • Protecting wood from moisture in concrete

    Concrete will allow water or water vapour to move through it quite easily, so any wood in contact with concrete must either be pressure treated wood, or you should have a plastic separator between the wood and the concrete. A simple slip of polyethylene plastic is all it takes to prevent rot at t...
  • Pro: Air Entrained Concrete

    Concrete, outdoors in the Canadian climate, has a particularly difficult time surviving. Walkways, patios, driveways and the like must have as much as 4 to 6 inches of gravel as a drainage base to minimize the effects of shifting from frost movement in the soil. Drainage around these areas has to...
  • OVERVIEW: Outdoor concrete in a cold climate

    Air Entrainment When ordinary concrete gets wet and then freezes, the ice crystals can cause surface chipping, or even more serious fracturing. All outdoor concrete in Canada, even by code, should be what we call air entrained. This means that there are microscopic air bubbles in the concrete ...
  • Important precautions for installing large tiles

    The world of tiles is changing rapidly.  Twenty years ago we generally had a range of tile sizes from 1 ft x 1 ft down to tiny mosaic tiles.  This made tiling relatively simple because slight changes in the flatness of the surface could be adjusted for at the next grout line.  In fact that is...
  • Attaching a deck to a house

    The old days of stacking structure In the old days, before we had specialized hardware like joist hangers, we would always create beams, or low lying ledger boards and place the joists on top of them with some kind of toe-nail attachment. The arrival of joist hangers When joist hangers came in...
  • Peeling paint on a foundation wall.

    Michele in Hamilton, Ontario needs to repaint her cinder block walls on the outside of the basement. But a close look at a photo that she sent us showed a lot of deep holes or pock marks in the blocks. Not only the paint was peeling off, but the block itself was breaking off.  This is a sign o...
  • Basement Perimeter Drainage and Leaking Foundations

    This article deals with walls below grade, foundation walls.  For insulating above grade cinder block walls see How do you Insulate a Brick and Block construction as well as Insulating an Above Grade Block Wall from the Inside. The best way to prevent water from leaking into the basement is not ...
  • Raising the Driveway Slab

    Lokesh from Newmaket has a problem with his concrete driveway not being level. It actually flows water into the house. If you don't want to dig it all up and start over (which sometimes is the cheapest solution), you can actually raise the concrete slab to level it or even slope it away from the ...